


Too Little, Too Late

by GenerallyHuxurious (GallifreyanOmnishambles)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Armitage Hux is Clan Techie, Awkward Conversations, Disguise, Exile, Hiding, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kylo Ren is Matt the Radar Technician, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Permanent Injury, Post-Break Up, Post-Canon, Reunions, Somethings can't be fixed, Surgery, Twenty Years Later, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 20:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15871545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyanOmnishambles/pseuds/GenerallyHuxurious
Summary: Bryn - the local 'Techie' - has run this repair shop for decades without anyone suspecting his real identity. Until the shop bell rings and he finds himself with a customer he thought he'd never see again.





	Too Little, Too Late

**Author's Note:**

> Angsty prompt fill for “Wow, you look… amazing.”

The shop bell clattered for just a fraction of a second before it was silenced. 

Bryn had deliberately hung the device from the ceiling, fifteen feet above his head, because he knew what kind of beings haunted this particular spaceport. He’d rather be disturbed every time someone entered the shop that be surprised by a thief, so the abrupt silence put him on high alert.

He pushed the heavy strands of long copper-grey hair back over his ear, making the gesture as casually as possible. He was glad he’d had the idea to install convex mirrors all along the shelves- he could see the rest of the shop without turning his head too far. There was a tall dark figure standing just inside the door.

Still, Bryn’s fingers didn’t stop moving delicately over the circuit boards spread across his workstation. He was concerned, but didn’t mean he wanted the newcomer to know that he was feeling wary. He’d keep on working until he had a reason to stop.

“Wow, you look… amazing.” It was little more than a crackling sigh of a statement but Bryn felt that voice in his bones and the hollow space in his chest where his heart used to be.

Ancient animal instincts warred between the urge to fight or to flee but ultimately them left him frozen in their indecision, expecting death to strike at any second between his shoulder blades. Maybe he deserved death for running all those years ago, for abandoning his post, for escaping from  _ him _ .

“Holy shit, Hux, I never thought I’d see you again.” The man went on in tones of wonder.

This was a voice he hadn’t heard in two damn decades but somehow he’d always known it would be the last thing he heard before he died.

Much to his shame it was always the last thing he heard in his mind before he fell asleep at night. Memories of times long gone.

He didn’t turn around. He wasn’t Hux any more. He wouldn’t ever be Hux again.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, my name is Bryn.”

“I thought you died,” the voice continued with an uncertain waver that cut right to Bryn’s core. “I thought I killed you.”

_ You did. _ He thought the words loudly but he didn’t say them. The man behind him drew in a startled breath all the same, proving that this wasn’t a trick- it really was Kylo Ren... unless the impersonator was a Jedi as well. 

Too many years spent living in fear of discovery had Bryn’s paranoia running rampant. What would be worse- Kylo here to kill him or a Jedi here to drag him in front of a war tribunal?

“I was  _ never _ a Jedi,” Kylo muttered under his breath. He sounded more sad than angry at the misnaming of his training. Bryn heard the characteristic scuffing of toes against the ground that had always accompanied Kylo’s more petulant moods.

“I’m not the person you’re looking for,” Bryn said. Not because he thought Kylo would believe him but simply out of some well worn need for plausible deniability.

“I wasn’t looking for anyone,” Kylo chuckled oddly. He was still behind Bryn but his face was hidden from the mirrors as he around the shop, inspecting the shelves and the larger items that hung in nets from the ceiling. “I was looking for a radar diplexer for a YT-2550 medium freighter, actually. A Koorivar loitering by the docking bays told me ‘Techie’ might have one. I guess that’s you.”

Bryn turned then, brows raised and eyes whirring as they adjusted to focus through the dim light of the shop. He really needed to stop leaning so close to the desk lamps, it ruined his night vision.

“A YT-2550?” He asked in surprise. “I mean, yes, I have that part, but don’t you want a YT-1300?”

Kylo took a step back. He was wrapped head-to-toe in heavy robes, but Bryn could still read his body language. He’d learned to predict Kylo moods even before he had become Supreme Leader and lost all control of his aggression. Right now Kylo was repulsed.

So much for Bryn ‘looking amazing’.

“The Falcon disintegrated under my feet less than a month after I took her back.” Kylo said. “One last spiteful act from my dying past, but that’s not important... what happened to your eyes?!”

Bryn moved to rub them, a subconscious habit that never helped the itching. He caught his own wrist gently between his mechanical fingers, forcing his hands down in front of him. It felt like a submissive pose, so he switched them to resting behind his back, hating to look like he was nervously fidgeting while fully aware that was precisely what he was doing.

“Fuck... what happened to your  _ hands _ ?!” Kylo asked before Bryn had even opened his mouth to answer the first question.

He shrugged. “The First Order wasn’t so keen on genetic records- too much risk of Stormtroopers discovering their heritage- iris and fingerprint scans were secure enough for our... their needs. So when I left...”

“You should get your money back, whoever did your eyes was a hack.”

“Do you really think I would have trusted anyone else with such a task?” Bryn asked through gritted teeth. “At that time? When both you and the Resistance wanted me dead?”

“I didn’t want yo...  _ No _ . You did that to yourself?! How?”

“One eye at a time.” The shrug was becoming a nervous tick but he couldn’t stop himself from doing it, not when he was trying desperately not to remember that horrible day. “The hands were professional work. High voltage discharge plays merry hell with your extremities in the end.”

Kylo made a noise that sounded suspiciously like suppressed retching. Bryn shuffled his feet, but decided not to mention replacing them as well. There was no need to bring up something Kylo would never see.

“What about you, Supreme Lea...”

“Don’t call me that.” Kylo snapped. He hadn’t been Supreme Leader since he’d lost the war eighteen years before, but old habits of rank died hard.

“Kylo, then.”

“Hux... Bryn... I...” The man he’d known as Kylo Ren unwrapped the heavy cowl from around his face.

Bryn had to sink his own fingers into the soft meat of his lower back to keep from laughing out loud.

The badly bleached hair was ridiculous enough on its own- cropped just short enough to reveal the massive ears Hux had once been so fond of- but the oversized glasses really completed the look. No one who’d known the Supreme Leader would ever recognise him in this slouching hulk of a man.

“I go by ‘Matt’ now, and I am so,  _ so _ sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Bryn knew better than to look a gift fathier in the mouth, but he’d fantasised about this conversation so many times- if he had to endure it in reality then he would get exactly what he wanted from the man who’d so completely broken him.

“For everything.”

“For Starkiller?”

“Yes,” Matt said ardently. “Yes, I’m sorry my personal interests cost us our greatest weapon.”

“For the throne room?”

“Yes. I shouldn’t have made you kneel. You were my equal.”

Bryn shuddered, remembering all the other times he was forced to his knees after than first humiliation, but he had a script and he would stick to it.

“For Crait?”

“Yes!” This answer was tainted by something like frustration. “I shouldn’t have lost control and I cost us victory...”

“For...”

“Yes, Hux,  _ YES! I! AM!  _ **_SORRY!!!_ ** ” There was spittle flying from his lips then and more of anger than contrition in his tone. So it still didn’t take much to push him to breaking point. He couldn’t even keep his temper to the end of an apology.

Bryn had picked up the shock stick he kept hidden under the workbench without ever even thinking about it. Twenty years had been a long time to consider the course of one’s life and he would never, ever submit to this man’s temper, not ever again. He had no delusions about his ability to protect himself, but better to die than to endure any more of this misplaced rage.

“I am sorry for what I did to you, and I am sorry for what I made you do, and I am sorry for what I took from you. You were so much more than what I allowed you to be...”

“And what  _ exactly _ was I?” Bryn asked in icy tones. His mechanical fingers creaked around the shaft of the shock stick like it was Matt’s neck he was wringing. “You used me as little more than a sex toy and a punching bag combined, so what was it that you thought I was, really?”

“Hux, you were the love of my life.”

_ “Fuck. Off.”  _

The words were already out of his mouth before he could think them, but Bryn didn’t regret what he said. Let them stand.

Matt deflated at that as if he had finally realised the absurdity of what he was saying, his eyes fixed on the ground as he spoke.

“You’re right. You were right. All along. You were so much more than I ever gave you credit for, and I destroyed it all.  _ I _ ruined everything. I know that now. And you were right to run. I’m glad you got away. I would have killed you in the end.”

Bryn had no answer to  _ that _ . In all the variations on this scenario that Bryn had imagined over the last two decades they’d almost universally ended with them fucking or dead. They’d never ended with Kylo acknowledging what he’d done.

“When you left me...”

“When I escaped,” Bryn snapped. “When I escaped  _ you _ .” He’d fled in the middle of the night shift, dressed only in his sleepwear and still bleeding from half a dozen places. He hadn’t even had time to grab his boots. 

“Everything unravelled.” Matt went on. “The Order, the war, everything went wrong in any way it possibly could. Everything except my control, because that was already gone. When we were both under Snoke’s control you were the voice of reason that I could do harmless battle with and still return home to ever night, but when I ended him, the power was too much. I didn’t realise you were keeping me in check. I didn’t see what I was doing until you weren’t there any more. You were already mine and I forced you... I was a monster.”

Bryn shrugged again, apparently incapable of any other gesture now.

“We were both monsters, Ky... Matt, the galaxy doesn’t keep hunting creatures like us on a whim.” Bryn knew all the things he’d done in the name of victory. He was no longer proud of them, but he also knew they could never be changed.

“We didn’t need to be monsters to each other. I still shouldn’t have done what I did to you. You never raised a hand against me.”

“I came close.”

“But you stopped. You could have killed me, that night when you left.”

“No.” 

That was the one thing Bryn knew he could never do. He’d had the chance more times than Kylo had ever known, but he’d never been able to go through with it.

Matt sighed and scrubbed awkwardly at his hair. Broken over-processed strands drifted to the floor. It was all Bryn could do not to touch his own thick and healthy locks. How the tables had turned in that regard. 

“I’m glad you’re still alive.” Matt said at last.

“I’m glad you’re alive too.” Much to Bryn’s surprise that was true. “Even if you do look ridiculous.”

“Not all of us can still be beautiful twinks at the age of fifty,” Matt laughed, then swallowed hard. “I still love you.”

Another shrug. “You wanted a diplexer for a YT-2550?”

“Bryn, Hux,  _ please... _ Armitage...”

“No.”

He put down the shock stick, noting the way Matt jumped a little at the noise. Perhaps he had still expected Bryn to use it. Maybe he’d been hoping for Bryn to take revenge and then forgive him. Perhaps he would have done that, once, a lifetime ago. 

“500 credits.” He said instead.

“What?”

“That’s my price,” Bryn explained as he reached for the radar component in question, “that and the promise that you won’t come back for at least six months. I won’t be here if you come looking but I want a running start.”

The lights of the shop shone on the surface of Matt’s glasses, hiding his eyes but highlighting the tracks that ran slowly down his cheeks.

“I loved you.”

“And I loved you. But I can’t be with you. Somethings can’t be repaired.”

A pile of the credits clattered onto the workbench.

Bryn carefully wrapped the component in anti-static fabric and slid the bundle forward. He kept his hands resting on the package, but Matt didn’t reach for it. Instead the Force lifted it gently up while the lightest touch drifted over his cheek. The contact felt a little like soft warm lips. 

“Kylo?”

“Yeah?”

“You always said the girl killed Snoke...” Bryn paused, watching the other man’s smile. “I wish you had told me at the time you’d done it. I’m glad it was you. He deserved to die and you deserved to be free.”

“But not quite as free as I was in the end.”

“Maybe not.”

Matt nodded and pulled the cowl back up around his head. “Good luck.”

“May the Force be with you.”

The bell jangled behind the closing door. Bryn bit his lip, and turned back to his circuit boards. Thank the stars these eyes wouldn’t let him cry any more. He had better things to do with his life than that.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, look at me trying to get back into this writing thing. There's a lot more short fics over on [Tumblr](https://creepycreepyspacewizard.tumblr.com/tagged/my-writing)


End file.
